Book News

Obama out front

Maybe it’s the prose or the charisma or the novelty. But if voter excitement were measured by book sales, then Sen. Barack Obama would be the clear front-runner.

Sales have exploded in 2008 for the works of Obama, the Illinois Democrat who has steadily climbed in the polls all year. Sales have stayed flat for the works of Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who quickly and suprisingly became his party’s presumptive nominee after he seemed finished last summer.

Acording to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of industry sales, combined sales for Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope” were averaging more than 35,000 a week in late February, more than triple the pace of early January, when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was still favored to be the Democratic nominee.

Meanwhile, McCain’s sudden prominence has had no discernible impact on “Faith of My Fathers,” a highly praised, best-selling memoir released in 1999, and on “Hard Call,” a book about character in public life first released last August. The Associated Press

First Line

The Somnambulist, by Jonathan Barnes, $23.95

“Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever. It is a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and wilfully bizarre. Needless to say, I doubt you’ll believe a word of it.

“Yet I cannot be held wholly accountable for its failings. I have good reason for presenting you with so sensational and unlikely an account.

“It is all true. Every word of what follows actually happened, and I am merely the journalist, the humble Boswell, who has set it down. You’ll have realised by now that I am new to this business of storytelling, that I lack the skill of an expert, that I am without any ability to enthrall the reader, to beguile with narrative tricks or charm with sleight of hand.”

The long-awaited exhibition will feature artifacts, stories and perspective on the historical role of brewing in Colorado's fortunes, from Adolph Coors' first experiments to (relative) upstarts and current titans such as New Belgium Brewing.